The universal life church of beer kegs and bands

TL... I'm not really sure... 80- 84??

I seem to find myself over the years becoming a part of a 'thing', then drifting off after a while. The Universal life church wasn't a church really, that is unless you consider that almost everyone drinks, the universal part, and this is where you came to do it. It was out by Elgin somewhere, a big house someone had built. It was a Ranch style place, with a basement and a built in pool room that was an open area from the basement up to the roof. The walls of the pools came right on down, there was no walk way around it, dark bricks at that. The house was laid out in kind of a square around the pool, with many rooms... you could walk around it visiting each room and group that happened to be in there for a long time. There was no free standing furniture, except for the occasional table. There was plenty of stuff to sit on made out of plywood benches attached to the walls covered with a kind of short carpet. These benches conformed to the walls shapes everywhere.
Maybe I should start at the beginning. I got told by someone that there was a huge party happening somewhere, and they had the directions on how to get there. I think I was driving the GEX at the time. The directions turned out to be wrong... on purpose. They misspelled all the road names by a bit, I think so they'd be able to deny that the invites led to their house if they had to. So, we pull up finally to this low slung, big house whose front yard was a gravel parking lot, filling up with cars. You paid $20 to get in, and drank from the provided kegs all you wanted. They even had bands playing there. The house was set well off from any other house by a quarter mile at least... it was the boonies for sure.
There where many bathrooms, big ones, but not styled like a public bathroom, more like they had built this big place as a regular house and then converted it. The bathrooms had locking doors and could have anything going on inside once locked, heh. I recall many times having at least 10 people in one with room to spare as we all got stoned.
The basement had this one room that was set up like a disco from the movie "Staying alive". The floor even had the lights that moved around in it. There was another room down there that had a table with a mirrored top that everyone did their coke on. I have no idea how the place didn't get closed down, except for maybe the clause about it being a church of some kind, and the owner that I got to know, had gotten his 'pastor' papers through a magazine add. I enjoyed that first trip so much, I asked if I could once again the next weekend, which they where more than happy to oblige. After my 5th time, they started letting me in for free as I had become a bit of a bouncer. I didn't actually have to bounce anyone, but I was always alert for things going wrong and they appreciated having me there to back them up.
From all the time I spent there, I can only relate a couple of memories. One was while sitting in a living room pit, hard carpeted plywood. The pool had one window to the rest of the place, and it had a small ledge on the inside of it. As we sat in the pit area, one of the girls started laughing and pointed up at the window. There was a naked guy clinging to the ledges, looking back at the pool, but spread eagle to us! Everyone stated to laugh... then one girl said 'That’s disgusting', stood up and smacked the glass right where his privates where. The guy freaked... I recall him spinning his head around as he fell away, eye wide, down into the pool below.
The bands where always pretty good rock bands, and the room they played in was perfect and LOUD! Everyone had their plastic cups from when they came in and all you had to do was walk up to one of the half doors openings that functioned as a bar and ask for a refill.
I got to know the owners pretty well, and their son and his wife. The son had an apartment you might call it downstairs. I didn't even know it was there till one day they took me in. The door was along one hallway and was well hidden. I must have walked past it dozens of times. They had a magnetic key that they put up against a panel that unlocked it. This was a nice sized place too.
Then came the weekend that I found out that someone from my home town had rented it for the Saturday night party. Being that I had become kind of a regular there, I was looking forward to showing people I knew around. Well... seems I drank too much somehow. I made it to one of the bathrooms in time, and drove the porcelain bus for a bit. I cleaned up myself and went back into the thick of the party, grabbing another beer along the way. Big mistake. I hit various bathrooms around the place for the next few hours, each time thinking I'd be ok afterwards. Now that was a terrible night, heh.

As an after story to the above, I got invited by a buddy to another house out that way, so I took my Girlfriend there. It was eerily familiar. Turns out the guy that designed the Universal life church had started out with a small one, then built this one, to latter build the even bigger church. This one had a pool also, but smaller, and it was located right off the main bedroom, how cool! You could wake up in the morning, get off the bed, walk forward to a set of stairs that led down about 4 feet to the pool! If I ever hit the lotto... Ya know?